ut I feel bound to say you are
ungenerous. You've an old grudge against Weedon Moore. You all have,
all you boys who were brought up with him. So you break up the meeting."

"Now, see here, Amabel," said Jeff, "we haven't a grudge against him.
Anyhow, leave me out. Take a fellow like Alston Choate. If he's got a
grudge against Moore, doesn't it mean something?"

"You hated him when you were boys," said Amabel. "Those things last.
Nothing is so hard to kill as prejudice."

"As to the other night," said Jeffrey, "I give you my word it was as
great a surprise to me as it was to Moore. I hadn't the slightest
intention of breaking up the meeting."

"Yet you went there and you took that impossible Martha Beattie with
you--"

"Patricia, not Martha."

"I have nothing to do with names she assumed for the stage. She was
Martha Shepherd when she lived in Addington. No doubt she is entitled to
be called Beattie; but Martha is her Christian name."

"Now you're malicious yourself," said Jeff, enjoying the human warmth of
her. "I never knew you to be so hateful. Why can't you live and let
live? If I'm to let your Weedie alone, can't you keep your hands off
poor old Madame Beattie?"

Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled with
wounded pride.

"Jeffrey, I didn't think you'd be insincere with me."

"Hang it, Amabel, I'm not. You're one of the few unbroken idols I've
got. Sterling down to the toes. Didn't you know it?"

"And yet you did take Madame Beattie to Moore's rally."

"Rally? So that's what he calls it."

"And you did prompt her to talk to those men in their language--several
languages, I understand, quick as lightning, one after the other--and to
say things that counteracted at once all Mr. Moore's influence."

"Now," said Jeffrey, in a high degree of interest, "we're getting
somewhere. What did I say to them? What did I say through Madame
Beattie?"

"We don't know."

"Ask Moore."

"Mr. Moore doesn't know."

"He can ask his interpreter, can't he?"

"Andrea? He won't tell."

Jeffrey released his knees and lay back against the bench. He gave a
hoot of delighted laughter, and Lydia, watching them from the window,
thought of Miss Amabel with a wistful envy and wondered how she did it.

"Weedie's own henchman won't go back on her," he exclaimed, in an
incredulous pleasure. "Now what spell has that extraordinary old woman
over the south of Europe?"

"South of Europe?"

"Why, yes,